2 December, 2009

Reader and all around good guy Over00 (aka Dave Toulouse) has been hard at work on a new game called Blimp Wars. It’s an interesting game in that it is an action game with Javascript implementation. This means no plugins involved to play the game.

Anyway, loyal readers of my blog are invited to go test out the game: http://beta.blimpwarsonline.com/ Sign up for an account, try out some games, and submit some bug reports. Read on for some additional information.
Over00′s first game is Golemizer, a game he designed and wrote himself. He developed the technology behind the game. It’s a bit clunky in Golemizer and he’s worked hard to improve performance in his new game.

Dave really embodies the indie development spirit. He’s set a goal and worked to achieve it. His first game used free sprites with some custom contributed images. For Blimp Wars he’s outsourced some art to a company in Asia. He has funded the whole project himself while keeping his day job. Full disclosure: I’ve advised Dave on some game design and business elements in return for a small share of future revenue. He’s still done the lion’s share of the work, though and has been the driving force for the game.

Anyway, I encourage you to show some appreciation for a hard-working indie developer and go try out his games. Understand that Blimp Wars is a Beta and may not be highly polished yet. Give constructive and thoughtful feedback to help him improve the game and show your support.

While it’s true I’m handling most of it, Brian’s collaboration has been more than just what he said here.

As other indie devs can surely say, when you take take that first $1000-$2000 from your pocket and invest it in a dream of yours with no guarantee that it can someday become something more than a hobby, you first have to believe in yourself because you might be alone for a long time. Hopefully, you’ll receive support from your relatives which really helps though they often don’t have a clue of what you’re doing. And then someone that actually knows what he’s talking about comes and tells you “hey, you have something there, keep working” and that takes everything to another level.

You know that guy posting on a forum “hey, I want to make an MMO, where do I start?” well I was that guy (I didn’t make that kind of post though). The first thing that comes to our mind when hearing that is “please stop wasting bandwidth, have fun failing”. Brian didn’t do that. He was probably skeptical but his attitude felt to me like it was “show me what you got” instead of the usual “you’re wrong”.

Of course Golemizer is no WoW-killer but it did make it to release and been active for over a year and Brian’s support definitely helped to get it there.

Now the same is happening with Blimp Wars. I’m just a regular guy trying to make it happen and while I learned a lot with Golemizer I still have plenty to learn and Brian has been (and still is) and great mentor and supporter.

I might sound a bit over the top here but when there’s so many occasions to fail and abandon I can only say that Brian’s collaboration is a huge part of this project.

We don’t get to thank people enough so I thought it was appropriate to post this here. Hoping to see you all in Blimp Wars beta!

It looks interesting. Golemizer looks interesting, too. I wish I had more time to play… and more time to offer services as an artist. (Since I’m not good with the programming side of things, but I’m all for indie development…)

Just wanted to let know potential beta testers that I’m currently moving the game to the release server and I’m stuck with DNS lagginess so I might move the game to http://www.blimpwarsonline.com instead of beta.blimpwarsonline.com

[...] work for different MMOs. I’ve corresponded with people in many more countries about my work, even French Canadians. ;) Even a relatively small game like Meridian 59 has gotten a lot of international interest and [...]

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